Michael Raleigh This Is Not A Dark Ride Artist Statement

Writeup for
This Is Not A Dark Ride
Wood Water War: A National Exhibition on Resource Disposal and Rebirth"

Artist’s Statement

Greetings From Ghostland
Primarily, I tell ghost stories in acrylic and mixed media. This time, I’ve used photography and music to tell the tale. My approach blends figurative and abstract elements to create an ongoing internal narrative. I began to paint in 2000 after walking away from a career in corporate finance, intending to be a full time writer. Then, the stories in my head became pictures.To date, I have completed over 600 acrylic, oil, and mixed media pieces.

This Is Not A Dark Ride is a 5 minute, 90 image photographic montage video created from thousands of images of the crumbling ruins of the Coney Island, NY and Asbury Park, NJ. Beginning in spring 2001, I began to photograph the abandoned and decaying relics of these faded oceanside amusement areas while work crews entered these graveyards and began to clear away the last standing ghosts in the name of ecomonic rebirth.

Welcome to America
Despite racism and economic inequity, Coney Island, like most of New York City, is constantly being reborn. Asbury Park, on the other hand, is a true ghost town.

Greetings From Asbury Park
On many cold days along the Asbury Park boardwalk ruins, I never saw another living person. Just me and the echo of ocean wind through the crumbling Palace Amusements and boardwalk Casino. And I wondered who was really the last ghost standing.

Nothing is more disposable than the past in American society. We are a culture of great nostalgia, but limited memory. We tend to miss the irreplaceable signposts of the past only when they fade permanently into shadow. We search for something only when it’s missing. We wonder how something we claim to cherish has slipped away when we did nothing to save it.
It was on one of those cold afternoons in Asbury Park when I looked down the abandoned boardwalk and beyond, and thought, “Welcome to America. Greetings From Ghostland”.

This Is Not A Dark Ride was originally a mixed media piece consisting of photography on large steel traffic signs. I won’t tell where I got those signs. Let’s just say that these signs were “recycled”.

To me, the abstract narrative of image and music in this video installation combine to create a film noir.
This Is Not A Dark Ride uses the Bruce Springsteen song “Missing” to convey a sense of traveling through the remnants of a past that lingers like a ghost in the cold light of day.

As with much of my painted and mixed media work, This Is Not A Dark Ride is a ghost story.”

Michael Raleigh, 2006